Nominal Concept Types in German Fictional Texts

Abstract

This paper presents the preliminary annotation guidelines and the results of the first empirical investigation of Löbner’s (Journal of Semantics 28(3): 279–333, 2011) semantic distinction of four basic conceptual noun types (sortal, relational, functional, and individual concepts). On the basis of two German fictional texts, we test the hypothesis that the concept types are more frequently used with semantically congruent determination than with incongruent determination with respect to definiteness marking, number and possession. The proposed annotation guidelines follow a two-level approach and comprise (i) the semantic analysis of the nouns in the texts followed by (ii) the annotation of their particular grammatical uses. The results provide first empirical evidence for the distinction of the four concept types.